Overlooked insights from mobility instances? Reconsider our understanding of mobility processes

Drawing on some selected cases from a qualitative mobility study, I seek to make use of their insights to reconsider our current understanding of mobility processes derived from studies adopting a snapshot approach. My data demonstrate that viewed in a life-time perspective the relationship between father's career mobility and son's career mobility and thus inter-generational mobility, especially in relation to the self-employed, is much more complicated than researchers have expected, and that emotion could play a part in processes that generate mobility. These cases, however statistically unrepresentative or even exceptional, still serve to urge us researchers to re-conceptualise processes that link career mobility and inter-generational mobility and to explore the emotive aspect of class and mobility.